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| Thai art students on the island Koh Si Chang 2010 |
The 'Life Lessons' we can learn from our teachers... Teachers teach much more than their subjects. When I think back on the many wonderful teachers who have given me so much of their time and knowledge, what I remember is the larger ‘life lessons’ they taught me, even though I can hardly recall the specifics covered in their classes. Perhaps because it is so rarely mentioned, most students do not seem to realize how much teachers have to share nor the long-term effects that teachers can have on their lives. Too often, it seems that the world of interactions with classmates distracts and takes precedence over engaging with teachers, parents, and others who operate in a separate world of adults. Adults are often ignored as irrelevant. Yet, years later, the teachings come through in many ways.
Teachers sometimes complain that they are caught between being educators and entertainers, clowning in the classes in order to get the students to pay attention. What I would like for students to understand is that it is a two-way street: send energy to the teacher and the teachings and you will receive much more of what they have to offer. Make the teachers fight for your attention and you will get far less out of the class. That fight to keep students on track causes teachers so much stress that many ‘burn out.’ Studies have shown that the level of student achievement is correlated to whether or not they feel the teacher ‘likes’ them. My own experiences tell me that engagement is key. When students and teachers engage in friendly dialog, critical thinking, question-and-answer, with focus and humor and without defensiveness, then learning of all kinds can take place.
As a teacher of English in various Asian countries, I have found myself in the position of being a provider of access to the world. It was exciting to be so valued -- if the doctors and nurses that I taught at a hospital and medical graduate school in Inner Mongolia, north China, could learn to read and understand English, they would be able to provide better healthcare to thousands of Chinese patients. At the same time, English ability in China is rewarded by promotion and better pay. Those students were highly motivated and hard-working. Many of them really connected with me directly and some became close personal friends.
If the high school, college, and graduate school students that I have taught in China, Laos, Thailand, and Japan, could learn to communicate with the rest of the world in English, their lives may greatly improve. In communist China, most professionals are strictly monitored as members of ‘work units.’ Promotion and pay increases are often made dependent on completion of course work. English language is considered of real importance as part of professional development. English language students, for the most part, know that mastery of English has direct impact on job prospects and academic opportunities. Those who are ambitious reach out to native speakers and befriend them; those who remain vaguely aware of the importance but are distracted by the demands of their daily lives within their societies gain knowledge much more slowly. ‘Total Immersion’ in the foreign language and its culture(s) does seem to be the best way to learn. When you are forced to cope with day-to-day living in the language you want to learn, motivation is increased dramatically.
The young children that I have encountered informally in the last few months in Malaysia are already fluent speakers of three languages: Bahasa Malay, Chinese, and English. If they can also learn to read and write effectively in those languages, especially English, they will be able to travel, work, and/or live virtually anywhere. To really understand English, a language learner will have to learn more than the words. As a teacher, I discover myself trying to reveal to the students how much people are the same and what vast differences exist between cultures, and ways to bridge those gaps.
Through the years, I have had many teachers from foreign cultures. Of them all, two stand out as having given me and many other students so much of themselves: Onoe Kikunobu in Honolulu, Hawaii and in Kyoto, Japan, Fujima Kansome. Both of these beautiful women have dedicated their lives to ‘the most expensive hobby in the world,’ nihon buyo – Kabuki based Japanese dance. Kabuki dance theatre is an all-male province; nihon buyo is primarily a female form, though some males dance as well. Kabuki performers are professionals; nihon buyo dancers will always be considered amateurs despite their lifelong study. To become a teacher, students must master a repertory of dances and perform in annual recitals which are reviewed by a hierarchy of master teachers, including Kabuki performers. One of the many ideas that struck me from their classes was what it would mean to commit your life to a single repertory of dances or plays. Or to work your way for years towards mastery – the only thing comparable in American culture that I can think of is learning to be a plumber or a surgeon – to go from student to apprentice to become an assistant to a master teacher and eventually, perhaps after 30 years of study and practice, to become a master oneself. Japanese culture, in general, seems to take a much longer view than does the “immediate gratification” approach so often found in the U.S. To learn one 17-minute dance, we had a six-week intensive. My teacher told me that her teacher, one of the stars of the Tokyo Kabuki-za theatre, was still practicing in heaven. As I anxiously rehearsed for the recital, she told me to ‘relax’ because to learn to perform the dance correctly ‘takes three generations.’
The teachers that I remember best paid attention to their students. They gave me encouragement and tools that have made a real difference in my life. Mrs. Joyce in second grade cheered me up by listening carefully to my tearful tales of childhood disappointments. When we moved from New York to Seattle, Mrs. Strain expected me to print and write in an elegant cursive. When she carefully explained to me why she could not give me an ‘A’ but only a B+, she acknowledged my efforts and fueled my commitment to improve with the words, “Your brain moves too fast for your hand.“
In seventh grade, Mr. Titterington taught a course I have not seen offered in many American high schools – geography. We learned the names of all the countries in the world and were tested on finding them on maps. Taken to the huge city library, we were taught how to research countries we had never heard of. To this day, I no longer fear going to strange places because in his class, I learned where places are around the planet and the value of research before traveling.
Jennifer Barrows at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and Professor Terence Knapp at the University of Hawaii taught me what I most wanted to know: how to act and what I most needed to know: how to live an interesting life. How their approaches to theatre impacted my life would fill a book – or at least a separate essay. Suffice it to say that ‘Terry’ became more than a mentor to me and I will always consider him a second father. My senior year in high school, I was privileged to join a group of about 30 Hotchkiss students who met evenings in an abandoned study hall over a period of a year under the direction of Jennifer Barrows. Mrs. B took us from elementary scene work on Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology” to performing an exciting outdoor production of Shakespeare’s “Tempest.” Her evening workshops were so effective that the following year, she was the first female teacher hired at Hotchkiss and the after school program became regular courses held in a state-of-the-art auditorium. I was so taken with her teaching that I took a year off between high school and college to study with her, making me the first girl (who was not a faculty daughter) to study at the prestigious school, two years before it became co-educational. A graduate of the Union Theological Seminary, she showed us the broad gamut of theatre history in theory and practice. Crucially for my future, she introduced us to the importance of Asian and Ritual Theatre traditions to contemporary art and the fascinating origins of theater described in Sir James Frazier’s “The Golden Bough” and Theodor Gaster’s “New Golden Bough” – books which I’ve referred to every year since.
In the mid-1970’s, in the Drama Department at Vassar, we called our teachers “Mr.” not “Professor.” Those professors -- Messieurs Evert Sprinchorn, William Rothwell, John Curtin, and especially Thaddeus Gesek, as well as those who came and went (Ms. Linda Herr, Mr. Clint Atkinson) – were not only respected scholars but also uncommonly creative. Mr. Gesek revealed the secrets of 2-dimensional ‘butterfly perspective’ that made Renaissance art so different from its predecessors and challenged his students to create a 3-dimensional set for a play that had not been written. He created sets out of fliptops from metal cans and held patents on ways of twisting plastic 6-pack rings into unique shapes. Mr. Sprinchorn culminated our four years of study with a no-limits three-hour exam on “all of theatre history.”
In the 1980’s, Dr. James R. Brandon headed the dynamic Asian Theatre Program at the University of Hawaii.As one of the leading scholars in the world on performing arts of Asia, his scholarly knowledge of Japanese Kabuki theatre was second to none. Among the extraordinary teachers in the department at the time were Roger Long who was in the final stages of his doctoral work, teaching history and theory of Southeast Asian Theatre and practicums in Javanese wayang kulit shadow puppetry. Visiting professors included Betty and Clifford Jones who instructed us in South Indian dance and drama, master artists from the Japanese Noh and Kyogen theatres, as well as playwrights from Malaysia and Indonesia and elsewhere.
The graduate students arrived from all over the world with videotapes of rare festivals and trainings with master teachers; we formed a club to share our stories and ideas. One memorable night we demonstrated gesture language from our various backgrounds, saying “I love you” in ballet, American sign language, Hawaiian hula, Middle Eastern belly dance, Malaysian Muslim floor work, Japanese Kyogen comedy, Central Javanese topeng masked dance, South Indian Kathakali and Kuttiyattam dance drama.
What did we learn? Beyond the colorful bounty revealed by our teachers and colleagues of the many traditional arts in the world, what comes back is the closeness and caring we felt for each other – the ‘aloha spirit’ in action. ‘Jim’ Brandon, Roger Long, and so many others spent hours with me in conversations about our favorite topic. It was as though we were pioneers holding hands somewhere on the cutting edge – exploring the traditional arts of the past in order to inform some new art, some emerging and important creations that would “hold the mirror up” to the shrinking planet.
Recently, thanks to Facebook, I have reconnected with my high school biology teacher, Dr. Malcolm MacLaren. His emails to me have spoken of corals, fishes, the conditions of our oceans. They reminded me of what I still value from his classes so long ago: the ideas that science can be exciting, discovery can be a lifelong passion, and enthusiasm can be infectious. Interestingly, science teachers in Seattle, Washington; Chappaqua, New York;and Falls Village, Connecticut all seemed to be among the most enthusiastic for their subjects – perhaps because they, too, felt they were showing us the cutting edge of scientific understanding of the world. Math teachers, too, seemed to bubble over with excitement about a subject that always baffled me. When I was in seventh grade in the sixties, the ‘new math’ was just being introduced to the curriculum. I struggled but I tried. This kind teacher (and I apologize to him that I have forgotten his name now) recognized that effort. He explained to the class that the difference between getting a ‘C’ and a ‘B’ in his class had to do with effort – making a commitment. I tried even harder after that. Then there was the joke-cracking ‘Math Man’ Mr. Bond who voluntarily added an extra hour and a half to his workday to tutor those of us who couldn’t quite grasp what he taught in the regular classes. I still find myself quoting his punishment for making errors, “Forty lashes with a wet noodle.”
Another teacher who communicated his enthusiasm for life was the late Andrew Casale. We high school students in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s skipped classes to ‘sit down’ on the lawn in front of the school to protest the so-called ‘War in Vietnam.’ Post-Woodstock, we were the last of the ‘hippies,’ wearing long hair and going bra-less in baggy clothes to protest against authority and the ‘Establishment.’ We talked a lot about our feelings. A few took action like those who bombed the school one night. Mr. Casale put together a course called “Contemporary Problems” to encourage us to talk about the issues we faced – alcohol, drugs, war, young love -- and to do the research necessary to support a coherent argument and to use the tools of persuasive speaking and writing. When the class first began, most students stayed silent, seemingly fearful of criticism. He organized lessons that allowed us to take the risk of speaking out publicly, and encouraged us to go beyond our ‘feelings’ language by developing logical and specific arguments to support our generalized ideas. He was a great talker himself and led by example. I miss him.
The scariest teacher I ever encountered was Mr. Weedin at Vassar College. Desperate for the opportunity to study Shakespeare’s works, for two weeks, I sat in line every morning for permission to take the course. The first day of class, the tall skinny man in a New York City Ballet t-shirt stood high on a platform behind a podium and peered down at us through horn-rimmed glasses. He announced that he had been studying Shakespeare for thirty years and he intended to introduce us to a new way of looking at literature. His long splayed fingers pointed at me: “Miss Fairservis, can you list three motifs in the play, “Two Gentlemen of Verona?”
The fall term was among the most difficult ever and not just for me. I struggled to understand what he wanted, ‘pulling all-nighters’ to write the three 10-page papers he required and read the many plans. My first paper on the “Two Gents” was a disaster, the second was better as I got together with other students to trace every possible connection between the two parts of “Henry IV.” The Thanksgiving holiday passed in a blur as I set up a typewriter in the family kitchen, heading to the dining room for a bite of turkey, then returning to the kitchen as soon as I could politely excused myself. I thought I had gotten a grasp on something deep in the structure of “Romeo and Juliet,” something that I thought he would approve. On every page, I found evidence of Shakespeare’s brilliant use of the seasonal pattern – spring, summer, fall, winter. Ten pages, then twenty, then forty; I presented him with sixty pages – and horror of horrors, he refused to take it. Those of us who had been unable to produce acceptable papers were told we must write another ten pages in less than a week.
That first term we studied the most problematic plays: “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “All’s Well that Ends Well,” “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” My grade for the term was the worst I’d had in years: B minus. Of the 30 or so students in the course, 15 dropped out after the first term. This clever teacher, however, must have anticipated the students’ distress. The first term grade was provisional and if the second term grade was higher, the first term grade would be raised to match it.
After the New Year, I returned to Vassar and requested a meeting with the Dean of Studies who encouraged me to ‘stick in there.’ That second term was magic: we started with “King Lear,” then took on “Hamlet,” “Richard II,” and “Richard III” and many more – all the greats. We ended the term with a play I already knew very well from having performed it in high school, “The Tempest.” I hauled the class into the theatre and we performed a scene for our final project. What made the difference between first term and the second? First, the quality of the plays and our teacher’s passion for them. Second, we moved from a lecture hall to a conference room with a gorgeous view and the ten of us plus Mr. Weedin gathered as equals around a round table trading exciting insights. Of all the years of study, that one class stands in memory as the most thrilling.
Other teachers who often come to mind are high school teachers Donald Kobler and Miss Estey. They were my French teachers. Freshman year there was no room for me in the beginning class and having taken a summer course a few years before, I was placed in the second year. Mr. Kobler took extra time with me outside class to help me begin to grasp how to learn a foreign language. Afflicted with bursitis, heavy-set and white-haired, occasionally falling asleep in class, Miss Estey hammered home the conjugations of the many verb tenses and intricate grammar underpinning French language. Never was grammar taught this way in any English language classes – which may be an important reason why so many Americans have difficulty learning a second language.
Senior year, Mr. Kobler was our teacher for an advanced English and Humanities course. As one of the reviewers for the Advanced Placement exam, he gave us invaluable clues as to how to how tests are structured. Thanks to him, I tested out of the standard introductory course required of most college freshmen and was able to spend many hours in play rehearsals. He was also a journalist and wrote for the award-winning local paper, the Lakeville Journal. He continued to encourage my interest in theatre many years after high school. When our fledgling theatre company first produced plays at the Sharon Playhouse, I turned to Mr. Kobler for advice on how to write press releases. He not only gave me advice and models but also came forward with his extensive publicity list of local media which made all the difference to having a successful and profitable season.
Gordon Heyworth was another teacher who not only had real impact on me as his student but also came to be important to my family and our theatre work for many years to follow. At age 14, passing notes in class without getting caught seemed of greater priority than reading along as he read Milton’s “Paradise Lost” aloud in class. Yet last year – some 40 years later -- when designing a literature course for Thai students, I recalled those days and the students responded positively to that crucial work in the history of English literature. Those readings came to mind many times over the years whenever we needed an actor for readings and performances of my father’s many plays. My sophomore year English teacher became more than a colleague who shared a love for theatre, he became a family friend.
Perhaps the lesson that I treasure most from high school is one I learned from John ‘Jack’ Mahoney. The winter of my junior year was one of the coldest imaginable. I was sick a lot that year and missed some 34 days of school (out of 180) that year. My memory is hazy but I think I was going to be cut out of some privilege given to the other students due to all my absences. When I protested, Mr. Mahoney opened the decision up to the whole class for a vote. On the blackboard, he wrote pros and cons and elicited comments from the students, listing them on the board as he taught us the value of brainstorming. Honestly, I do not remember either the issue or the result. What I remember is this phrase: “Before you tear something down, you should have a plan to build something better.” ‘Before destruction, construction’ has become a principle for my teaching and my life.
For me, the question is not “What makes a good teacher?” but instead, “What makes a good class?” The quality of any class depends on so many factors: the teacher, the individual students, the group dynamics, the surrounding environment of the school. The weather, the temperature and cleanliness of the classroom, even the size and shape of the student desks may have impact. As a teacher, I try to create an environment for learning and put myself in my students’ shoes. As a student, I am more self-concerned. I want to know what I will ‘get’ from any class I take. I may get certified as an expert in some field, or I may be ‘forced’ to read and discuss the works of a poet, playwright or novelist in a literature class; I may get more fit in a dance class. I expect to ‘get’ a deepened understanding of a topic in any course.
Afterwards, looking back, what I take away from a class depends on something less immediate – the ‘life lessons’ I learned. Those lessons come from the souls and hearts of the teachers I have had the privilege of encountering. They have given me knowledge, guidance and new perspectives. They have been my role models. Yet the most valuable lessons have come when a teacher has pushed me outside my comfort zone, when I have found myself up at dawn having worked on a paper or read a book all night for a class. I learned from the best teachers that I can surpass my own expectations. So that’s what I’d like to advise students to look for in their classes – the knowledge that needs to be mastered immediately, the relationships that you can build with your teachers and colleagues, and the principles that will sustain your life.
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By Teviot Fairservis
November 9, 2010
Copyright 2010, TF (teviothome@gmail.com)
